Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Stoke the cannons with a perfectly timed raised eyebrow, load up the molten balls with enough innuendo to take apart a battleship on the high seas and set the fuse going with the dogged appreciation. The reminder that Rock and Roll can be entertaining as well good for the heart and let rip, Open Fire, for one band with a sultry, Cavalier smile and an ear for the motif have returned better than ever and if any live album of the genre is worth investigating then The Darkness: Live at Hammersmith is surely it.
The Hammersmith Odeon is steeped in legend, so many great bands, extraordinary performances, artist who have come, gone and those that remain have found their way to performing inside the London venue, and with good reason, it is arguably one to savour; it is perhaps one of the stand out historic locations in which to look down into the swathing mass of humanity, in which to reach out and grasp the enormity of what you do for a living.
You can play the large and the spacious, you can perform to a group of the select or to an audience of millions across the globe, but the feeling that you get as the energy flows back and forth across the Hammersmith stage and outwards into the dark corners and the illuminated feel of dropped pints and exits signs pointing out in the heady London night, it is a feeling that The Darkness take hold of and paint the town absolutely scarlet with.
Across songs such as Love is Only A Feeling, One Way Ticket, All the Pretty Girls, Barbarian, Buccaneers of Hispaniola, Every Inch Of You, Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Japanese Prisoner of Love and the siren like call for wonderful participation and cleared throats of expression in the finale of Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) and I Believe In A Thing Called Love, The Darkness give everything they have got and make the evening one in which the pangs of jealousy of not being there to witness such a feat are magnified.
A rip roaring live album, one that calls out to be heard, enjoyed, performed loud and with a bucket full of glee and joy ready to rub your hands in, The Darkness: Live at Hammersmith is a belief and a power that cannot be contained for long.
Ian D. Hall